It only looks like a jelly fish. A sea turtle eats a plastic bag. Source: Heal the Bay. Click on the image to be taken to Heal the Bay.

A “closely watched, first-in-the-nation ban on plastic grocery bags was defeated Tuesday night,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “That measure, AB 1998, passed the Assembly in June and had the support of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, but faced a withering and well-financed advertising and lobbying campaign from the plastic bag manufacturing industry.” To keep reading, click here or, for the AP account, here. “Opposition arguments last night were straight out of Lewis Carroll,” writes a disgusted Heal the Bay president and bill co-sponsor Mark Gold in Spouting Off. To read in the Sacramento Bee how the American Chemistry Council, whose members include Exxon, Dow and plastic bag manufacturers, “unleashed a flurry of fresh donations to politicians and assembled teams of high-powered lobbyists” in advance of the vote, click here. LAist has a full report, including the defiant reaction of the bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Julia Brownley: “This is an environmental movement that won’t be stopped, even by big-money interests like the American Chemistry Council.”

For more information about the persistence beyond the check-out stand of single-use plastic bags, click here for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program.

This post has been updated. The quote from Mark Gold’s “We will win the War” in Spouting Off was added at 5.03pm.